“Two women is (not) the same as a man and a woman”: representations of medical doctors and judges about lesbian medically assisted motherhood

Abstract

This article focuses on a case-study about the representations of medical doctors and judges regarding medically assisted lesbian motherhood. Among medical doctors, the figure of “the father” is vital and lesbian motherhood is seen as a disturbing change; among judges, the presence of a father figure is not considered essential to motherhood. Accordingly, among the latter, lesbian motherhood is a maternal model that should have legal expression. However, in both cases, the underlying scenario is the dominant model of motherhood: marriage and the nuclear family.